The Virtu (26 page)

“Over the Sim.”

“Yeah.”

“And—let me guess—a
narrow
bridge.”

“Yeah.”

“Balustrade?” And when he only looked blank, “Handrails?”

“Oh. Yeah, I think there was, once. But…” He shrugged. “Rope.”

Which, of course, would have rotted away in the intervening centuries.

“This just gets better and better,” I said. “What else? Fire-breathing dragons? Spectral guardians?”

“Didn’t see none,” and it took me a moment to decide that he meant it as a very small joke. I couldn’t manage to smile at him, but I nodded my appreciation.

He said, “It don’t look like… I mean, I don’t think there’s traps or nothing.”

“Just the bridge,” I said.

“Yeah.”

Mehitabel said, “Must we stand here and
discuss
it to death? Ker Foxe assures us that we cannot go back, so I do not see that it matters whether the way forward lies over a bridge or across a field of flowers.”

“
Thank
you, Mehitabel,” I said. “But, yes, there is no reason to tarry.”

Mildmay gave me his irritating you’re-the-boss nod and turned to lead the way.

There was only one chamber between the heart of the labyrinth and the bridge, so we reached the edge of the Sim’s gorge all too soon. I realized, dizzyingly, that we were standing in the same spatial orientation in which we had found ourselves when we first encountered this abyss, only a distance down that I could not even begin to estimate. The Sim was visible in my witchlights, a rushing, howling death of water.

And the bridge was narrow enough that I was almost tempted to see if I could spot the spider who had spun it. Single file was the only option, and with the Sim close enough beneath to cast its spray up onto the bridge, the footing was self-evidently, murderously slick.

Mildmay glanced at me, then at Florian and Mehitabel, and said some-thing under his breath that I did not ask him to repeat. “Let’s do it same as before,” he said. “Me first, then Florian, then Keria Parr. You okay with going last?”

“It makes no difference,” I said. “Let’s just get this over with.”

If I had been anxious before, watching Mildmay cross that bridge made my heartbeat so rapid I was almost sick with it. He did not hurry, nor show any sign that he knew how agonizingly slow his progress was. But he did not slip, nor falter, and he was not reduced, as I had thought he might be, to crawling. He made it to the other side and stepped carefully away from the edge before he turned around.

He called across, “It ain’t so bad, Florian! Just take your time.”

I wondered, distantly, if that had been why he had been so appallingly slow, to encourage Florian Gauthy not to rush himself.

“All right,” Florian called back, his voice only slightly shaky. He had a harder time of the crossing than Mildmay—of course, he had not been trained as a cat burglar since he was old enough to walk—but he made it safely. As Mildmay was steadying him off the bridge on the far side, Mehitabel said very softly to me, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You look a little green.”

“Witchlights,” I said. “Everyone looks ill by witchlight.”

She did not believe me; the cool, cynical skepticism in her eyes jarred against her childlike face. But she said nothing, and when Mildmay called, “You ready, Keria Parr?” she turned away from me as if I had ceased entirely to interest her.

She crossed the bridge as calmly and steadily as a woman promenading along the harborfront. I told myself firmly that she was
not
doing it on purpose to annoy me, but I could not help the bitter smolder of resentment all the same.

My hands were shaking. I watched Mehitabel join Florian and Mildmay in safety and cast my witchlights as strongly as I could on their side of the river, as much to give myself something to focus on as to give them light. I stepped out onto the bridge.

“Murderously slick” had been an understatement. And the smell of the Sim was everywhere, like the reek of a charnel house. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I could hear the thundering cadences of Keeper’s voice.

Thee Sim had been his favored punishment, holding us under like kittens; I couldn’t even begin to guess how many children he had drowned before the Fire had killed him, as it had killed Joline and my mother and everyone else I knew. The smell of the Sim was in my nose and mouth, harsh in the back of my throat. I was choking, and the green lights were getting dimmer. Someone was shouting my name, but it wasn’t Joline, and I couldn’t couldn’t…

My knees buckled, and I fell.

Pitch-black.

And, I mean, not just no-lights kind of black. This was like the great-grandmama blackness of the world. And Felix was out in it somewhere, drowning.

“Fuck me sideways.” I barely recognized my own voice, and I didn’t sound like anybody I wanted to know, neither. I found my lucifers, dropped down beside the lantern where I’d set it on the floor, and lit it. “You two stay here.”

“But what—”

“I ain’t got time. Just
stay
.” I was dragging my boots off, shrugging out of my coat. Before the bitch had time to say some other fool thing, with Felix more likely to be dead with every single second, I went forward and off the bridge. ‘Bout as graceful as a dancing bear, since you ask, but this wasn’t about grace.

I ain’t never been a graceful swimmer, not even when both legs worked right. But I
can
swim, as most folks in the Lower City can’t, and I’m strong. Strong enough to have my own way against what the current wanted, strong enough to outswim it, strong enough, even though my leg was howling like a pack of hounds, that when I saw a white blotch, just at the edge of where there was any light from the lantern, I could thrash forward and grab it.

And that’s when things went completely fucked. I’d been expecting Felix to be passed out, but he wasn’t. He was awake and in a five-alarm panic. It was like the sinking of the
Morskaiakrov
all over again, only worse because it was the Sim and the current was fighting me along with him, and it was like trying to wrestle two gators at once. When I finally managed to thrash us both out of the main current, it felt like both arms were halt-wrenched out of their sockets, I had a shiner started where he’d got me in the eye with his elbow, and I was lost.

Now I’m sure that don’t sound like nothing, but, see, I don’t
get
lost. Never have done. But here I was in the middle of a river in the blackest fucking blackness I’d ever encountered, and I didn’t know where the bank was or where I was or where Florian and Miss Parr were, and I could have sat down and cried for the shame of it.

Small favors. The river was shallow enough here that we could stand up. I stood and panted like a dog with sunstroke. Felix was clinging to me like a child, his face pressed into my shoulder and his fingers clawed into my back, his breath coming in sobs. I kind of patted his back, best I could, but he hated to be touched, and I didn’t know whether he was crazy or sane or what, and so mostly I just stood there and let him hang on to me as much as he needed.

I don’t know how long we stood like that, neither. But after a while we were both breathing better, and Felix had let up a little on the holes he was digging in my shoulder blades. So I took a deep breath and said, “I’m lost.” Blackness or no blackness, I could feel myself blushing.

“You’re
what
?”

“Lost. You know. I don’t know where we are.”

“And?” he said after a moment.

“I need a light.”

He made a noise that could’ve been a laugh, a scream, or a sob. Or all three. “I don’t know if I can,” he said. “You don’t… you don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Nope. But if I don’t get a light, so as I can see where the fuck we’re at, we ain’t moving. How much longer you wanna stand out here?”

“Damn you,” he said. “
Damn
you.” I heard and felt him take a deep, shuddery breath. “All right. I’ll try.”

And then there was a long time where nothing happened. He hadn’t let go of me, and I didn’t like to say anything about it, because I needed a light a fuck of a lot more than I needed my own personal space back. But we were standing there, dripping wet, pressed up against each other, and I felt… Kethe, I felt his cock hardening against me.

There was this scrambling sort of moment, where we both tried to back away from each other and realized we didn’t dare, because in all this darkness and water most likely we’d never find each other again. And then his hands were clamped on my upper arms, and he was saying, “I’m sorry. Truly, I’m sorry. I swear I didn’t…”

He was apologizing, which was as hard to believe as any of the rest of it. He
never
apologized. I said, my voice cracking like I had two septads and one again, “You got the hots for
me
?”

And, you know, I would’ve believed him if he’d lied, said it was just one of those stupid things that happens when you’ve almost got killed. I understand how that goes. But there was this silence, and he said, very small “Yes.”

“Kethe,” I said, because I couldn’t think of nothing else to say. “You…Kethe!”

“Please,” he said, his voice still barely more than a whisper. “Please don’t… I know it must disgust you, but
please
…”

He sounded like he’d sounded when we were crossing Kekropia and he’d been crazy and sick-scared with it. I said, purely by reflex, “I won’t leave.” And then, because I didn’t know how I felt, and this wasn’t even close to the right place to try and work it out, I said, “Light. And we’ll worry about it later.”

“Yes, of course.” A laugh, shaky and not very convincing. “Light.”

But it happened easier than I’d expected. Easier than I think he’d expected. One minute there was nothing. The next there were his little green chrysanthemums again, showing us like a pair of drowned rats, and Felix looking everywhere except at my face.

The bank was close, and it was the same sort of jagged stair step deal it was back by the bridge. We dragged each other out of the river and sorted ourselves out as best we could, and Felix still wasn’t looking at me, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it, either. So I wrung the water out of my hair and said, “Okay. Let’s find the others and get the fuck out of here.”

We could deal with it later.

We came back up out of that labyrinth into what Miss Parr said was an abandoned sewer tunnel. Once, there’d been a spring to shut the door after you came through it, and I could see how it must have been completely flush with the wall, so you wouldn’t even be able to tell it was there. It was broken now, and it took me and Felix and Miss Parr all shoving as hard as we could to get the door shut again.

Nobody asked how come we had to shut it, and that was a small favor I was grateful for. My leg was screaming like a butchered pig, and I was so tired from dragging it what felt like halfway to Mélusine and back that I was having trouble keeping my eyes focused. Didn’t need no arguments.

Florian didn’t look no better off than I was, and Felix had his head down and his shoulders hunched, like he was trying to make himself disappear. Miss Parr still looked fresh as a daisy. Which, you know, nobody’s going to send you to the sanguette for, but it sure did make me want to smack her.

After everything else, getting out of the sewer was no big deal, even if Felix and Miss Parr did have to pull me up by main force. Powers, I hated being a crip. We came up in a courtyard like something you’d find in Pennycup and for a moment it was the homesickness that hurt. It was just past sundown, and Felix’s witchlights suddenly showed up way too well.

“Put them things out!” I said. Felix jumped like I’d pinched him, and his lights went out. It wasn’t quite too dark to see, but it was close.

“Satisfied?” he said nastily.

“You want to talk to anybody about what kind of hocus you ain’t?” I said in Marathine. He didn’t answer, and I said, “Didn’t think so.” Then back into Kekropian: “Keria Parr? Florian? Any idea where we are?”

“It’s an air shaft,” Miss Parr said. “We’ll have to go through the building to get out to the street.”

“It looks like apartments,” Florian said. “There’s laundry.”

And there was, strung from the balconies, and this was looking more like Pennycup or Lyonesse all the time, and the homesickness was crawling up into my throat and making it hard to breathe.

“Let’s go,” I said, and my voice came out harsh and mean, which wasn’t what I’d wanted at all. But there wasn’t no way to explain, so I just started for the courtyard door.

Which was locked. Figured.

“Keria Parr,” I said, “a hairpin?”

“A what?”

“Hairpin,” I said as clear as I could manage, but I was tired and kind of choked up and the word for hairpin in Kekropian had too many of the wrong kind of consonants.

“Did you understand that?” she said to Felix.

Fuck you, bitch, I’m right here and I ain’t no performing dog. But I didn’t say that, and I straightened out my hands where they’d clenched into fists.

Felix said in Marathine, “What is it you want?”

“A fucking hairpin, so I can get us through this fucking door. If it ain’t too fucking much to ask.”